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Police must focus on de-escalation when dealing with mentally ill: Editorial

Ontario police forces must implement key recommendations from a coroner’s inquest probing the shooting death of Michael MacIsaac to save lives.

Family members of Michael MacIsaac hold a photo of him, while holding hands at a demonstration at Queen's Park for people affected by fatal police shootings. (File photo)

By Star Editorial Board

Sat., Aug. 5, 2017

Last week the jury at a coroner’s inquest into the police shooting death of Michael MacIsaac issued thoughtful, important recommendations that should be implemented by all police forces to de-escalate confrontations with people experiencing a mental health crisis.

As sound, sensible and potentially life-saving as they are, though, none of the proposals are new. And that raises the troubling question of why police forces are failing to implement recommendations from other coroner’s juries, the Ontario Ombudsman and even a former Supreme Court justice.

As Michael MacIsaac’s mother, Yvonne MacIsaac, sadly noted: “I’m sure there have been lots of good recommendations from the inquests that have been had. My son would be alive if even a few of them had been followed.”

By now the details of how Michael MacIsaac was shot to death by a Durham Regional Police officer are well known. On Dec. 2, 2013, he had been running through the streets stark naked, banging on car windows.

But instead of trying to calm the obviously distressed man, as has been recommended by so many coroners’ juries, Constable Brian Taylor shot him twice only 12 seconds after arriving at the scene.

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The first time an officer actually tried to soothe MacIsaac was after he had been shot. That’s when Constable Jeffrey Williams told him: “I’m trying to help you; we have help on the way.”

Disturbingly, the incident followed the shooting deaths by Toronto police of three mentally ill people between 2010 and 2012. A coroner’s inquest into those deaths that reported in February, 2014, advised that when officers are approaching someone who is clearly in a mental health crisis they should drop their commanding voice and instead speak softly, offer help and strive to express understanding.

Most notably it happened after the highly criticized shooting in July, 2013, of Sammy Yatim. Yatim was shot after ignoring police commands to drop a small knife, less than 50 seconds after police arrived on the scene, though he was alone on a streetcar and could easily have been talked to.

Why haven’t police learned from these mistakes and from the many official recommendations that have followed them?

In June 2016, Ontario Ombudsman Paul Dubé issued a report saying he had counted well over 100 coroner’s jury recommendations calling for improved police training on de-escalation techniques since the Yatim shooting.

De-escalation was also a prominent theme in former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci’s landmark report in 2014 on Yatim’s death. Among his 84 recommendations: mandatory mental health first aid courses for new constables and expanding the use of mobile crisis intervention teams, in which a veteran officer is paired with a mental health nurse.

Still, in July, 2015, Andrew Loku was shot to death in Toronto only 21 seconds after police arrived on the scene. Again, an officer issued commands, not offers of help, before shooting. On June 30, a jury at a coroner’s inquest into Loku’s shooting recommended exposing officers in training “to the perspectives and lived experience of . . . individuals with mental health issues and/or addictions.”

The coroner’s jury examining MacIsaac’s death made a similar suggestion. It also recommended that training at the Ontario Police College be extended by one week to focus exclusively on de-escalation, and that officers should be trained on different communication techniques when a person doesn’t respond to shouted commands.

It all seems logical. But the message isn’t getting through.

While handling people in a mental health crisis can be one of the greatest challenges a police officer faces it is vitally important that officers receive adequate training in it. After all, Toronto police alone respond to more than 23,000 mental health-related calls a year.

Implementing the recommendations made in recent years would go a long way toward avoiding disastrous confrontations that result in a vulnerable person’s death, in shattered families, and in police officers wracked by self-doubt and guilt.

It’s time police chiefs and the Ontario College of Police got the message and trained their officers in these important de-escalation techniques before one more person in crisis is shot.

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